Regie Cabico

About the Artist

Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer who won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. Mr. Cabico was a featured poet at the 2022 Whitney Biennial and received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers. Television credits include The Poet Speaks, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TEDx & NPR’s Snap Judgement.  He is a teaching artist at the Kennedy Center for the Arts and one of the inaugural recipients of the 2023 James Baldwin Fellowship from La Maison Baldwin, Paris, France. His work appears in over 50 anthologies, including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He has shared the stage with Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, and through Howard Zinn's Portraits Project at NYU, has performed with Stanley Tucci, Jesse Eisenberg & Lupe Fiasco.  Cabico receives a 2008 Future Aesthetics Arts Award from The Ford Foundation, three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships for Poetry and Performance, the Larry Neal Award for Poetry, and several DC Commission for the Arts Poetry Fellowships. He has served as faculty at Banff's Spoken Word Program and Kundiman. He received three New York Innovative Theater Award Nominations for his work in Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind.  The Kenyon Review named Regie Cabico the "Lady Gaga of Poetry" and listed in BUST magazine's 100 Men We Love. He has served as a residency for several artists at New York University's Asian American Studies program, and is a founding Board member of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. His latest book of poetry is A Rabbit In Search of a Rolex (Day Eight, 2023).   

Artist's Statement

I am a poet born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and developed my artistry growing up in Prince George's County, the child of Filipino immigrants.  My poetry roots began at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe as a pioneer of the poetry slam genre of performance poetry. Poetry is a way to build connection. I strive to push my poetry and performance to the edge, combining comedy and danger, driving them to the gleeful extremes, and turning emotions on a dime. Everyone can write a poem. I incorporate simple stem structures  so that students can dive into the ocean of their imagination and find images with specificity. I use improvisation to create bonds between participants and build a nurturing environment by asking students to approach poems with curiosity rather than negativity. My pedagogy was developed at Bellevue Hospital, where I developed techniques to get students who don't want to write to engage by speaking their truth from their authentic voice.